What Size Jack Do I Need For My Trailer

Choosing a Trailer Jack for your Gunkhole

Past Tom Burden, Terminal updated nine/11/2019

Has your trailer jack turned into a hunk of rusty metal?

Your boat's trailer jack is a simple affair. It raises your boat, lowers information technology and has wheels that let it to pivot. Just when it seizes up or strips its worm gear, it can leave you lot unable to claw up, unhook or movement your trailer. In this commodity, I will offering advice on how to select the right jack for your boat when it's time to supersede information technology.

What is your boat'southward environment?

Do you use your gunkhole in a freshwater environment or in salt water? How friendly is the climate to a non-stainless-steel product that gets dunked in the h2o?

The general consensus seems to be that they're cheaply put together, final about 1 season and fail when you lot least expect it. Rinsing the jack with fresh h2o and lubing its gears regularly with marine-grade grease seems to assist, just in that location'south a lot of angst on the Internet about the humble trailer jack.

Is the jack galvanized, zinc, powdercoated or aluminum? If you only launch your boat in fresh water, a powdercoated jack volition handle that less-corrosive surround. For saltwater use, look for a jack that has a self-healing zinc coating or components made from aluminum (run across Fulton's F2 products).

Look at how many hours of saltwater exposure the jack is rated to survive. Our new 1,000 pound jack is rated for 100 hours of saltwater exposure to its clear zinc end.

Our ane,200 and 1,500 pound jacks are made with high-performance corrosion and UV-resistant finishes, rated to a more rigorous 600-hour standard. We also back these two models with a full 5-year warranty, so we're pretty confident they will perform.

Lift Height and Range of Travel

There are two measurements to know when choosing a trailer jack, the corporeality of travel betwixt the up and down position, and the total amount of extension the jack will provide. Smaller jacks accept a 10" range of travel. The biggest heavy-duty jacks in our selection accept a 15" travel.

Measure your trailer and tow vehicle to make up one's mind the height you will need. Yous can also buy a trailer hitch receiver with a ascent or a drib congenital into it. Read our West Advisor article called Sizing Upwardly Trailer Hitches and Couplers for more on this topic.

Will the Jack Fit the Natural language of Your Trailer?

As for how the jack attaches to your trailer, in that location are two styles, bolt-on and weld-on. Westward Marine does not currently offer any weld-on models, which demand to be attached by someone with professional person welding skills and equipment.

The most common size for trailer frames is 4" high and 3" wide. Our commodities-on models and most of the others we sell volition fit frames up to 3" broad past v" tall.

F2 with footplate

This F2 Bolt-On 2000 lb. Trailer Jack is made with aluminum components and includes a big 7" diameter human foot plate.

Does It Accept Enough Elevator Capacity to Enhance Your Trailer?

Do you take whatsoever idea what the trailer's tongue weight is? Typical tongue weights are 10 to 15 percentage of the total weight of the gunkhole and trailer. For example, if you have a trailer rig that weighs ten,000 pounds all-up, the tongue weight is probable to be ane,000 to 1,500 pounds.

If you do non know the tongue weight of your boat and trailer, we provide a couple of exercise-it-yourself methods to mensurate this in our Counselor commodity, Sizing Upwardly Trailer Hitches and Couplers.

Pocket-size Unmarried Wheel, Bigger Single Wheel or Double Wheels?

One minor wheel tends to dig into soft surfaces like gravel and makes pushing bigger, heavier trailers really difficult. Our 1,500-pound jack uses a large, 8" wheel. Upgrading to double wheels, found on our 1,200-pound jack, likewise helps. This fabricated a huge divergence in my power to movement a 1,800 pound 21' boat around by myself. Upgrading to the dual-cycle F2 jack was a dramatic improvement, and one of the best upgrades I've made.

Would a Jack With a Foot Work Better?

You lot might consider a jack with a rectangular pad on the bottom instead of a wheel, a drop-leg jack, if your boat is big and heavy enough and so yous never push button it around manually. We offer both pivoting models and those that don't pin, but just extend downward.